From an article by Vera Miller published in the LostRussianFamily web site:
For years, I have heard my grandmother’s brother was named after a brother who died as a baby. No one could tell me when this child was born, except he was born before 1927.
On Christmas morning, I discovered a new database from the City of Kyiv archives. The archives has indexed more than 190,000 birth records for 1919-1936 here. Yes, it is in Ukrainian but it is a very simple database. (See below for directions on using this database without knowing Ukrainian.)
I searched for my great-grandfather’s surname to see how many people would appear for Trunov. Only a mere 16 results appeared for this common Russian surname.
Only two people have the same full name as my grand uncle and his brother in this database. One person has been confirmed as the grand uncle I knew so I am confident the other boy born in 1923 is my other grand uncle. I have already found my grand uncle’s scanned birth record from Kyiv on another database. It would be shocking if the baby born in 1923 is not my grand uncle.
My mother remembers that her mother told her that the child died before he turned two years old. Besides requesting the 1927 birth record, I will request a search of death records to completely close the story on this grand uncle.
You can read the remainder of the story, including details on how you can use this new Ukrainian Database, at: https://bit.ly/3pq0LFA.